Often Irreverent, Mostly Rational Blog for Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. One Day, We'll Be Perfect.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

A two-sentence post on.... Joe Carter love

Statistically speaking, it's pretty hard to argue that Joe Carter was probably less than an ideal middle of the order hitter, and using those same statistical measures, it's also difficult to make the case that Joe was among the best players on the teams he played for.

But he was also a middle of the order hitter for two World Series winning teams and delivered what will likely be the greatest baseball memory for a generation of Blue Jay fans, so really..... what more could you ask of him?

10 comments:

If I had seen the other Joe Carter post before this (not exactly a regular here), this post is pretty much what I would have said.

Without getting too anecdotal on you, suffice to say I was 15 and my mind was so blown by what I saw that I didn't even cheer. My mom asked, "Aren't you happy?" I was like, yeah, that's cool. And I went to bed. It was quite a while before I really grasped what, exactly, he had done.

I'm sure a lot of people think he was awesomecakes in every possible way, but his legacy is that home run. Everything spins off that. I actually think the takedown of him works in the sense of it being practice for anyone else that gets served up, because of all the Jays in history, Carter is the one least defined by numbers. So Tao was right to say everything he did; he just needed to finish with, "But all that said, Joe Carter is the man until someone wins us a Series with a season-ending home run in Game 7."

In my view, Joe Carter's greatest value was in his consistency...10 years of 100+ RBIs.

Like a bond that never defaults payment. Just put him in the lineup and you could forget about him.

The certainty this provided a GM and manager when making roster decisions was surely very valuable. Certainty impacts the ability to predict and thus make seasonal strategy..without this any team is lost.

Was he a hall-of-famer? No.

A professional you could count on to be in the lineup driving in runs? Yes.

In my view, Joe Carter's greatest value was in his consistency...10 years of 100+ RBIs.

Like a bond that never defaults payment. Just put him in the lineup and you could forget about him.

The certainty this provided a GM and manager when making roster decisions was surely very valuable. Certainty impacts the ability to predict and thus make seasonal strategy..without this any team is lost.

Was he a hall-of-famer? No.

A professional you could count on to be in the lineup driving in runs? Yes.

Stats only tell one portion of the story. We need only look to the views of former Jays GM (and Hall of Famer) Pat Gillick on the role of stats in baseball. http://sportingnewsradio.com/shows/jason-goch/pat-gillick-and-sabermetrics-39613/

I was always kinda impressed with Carter's sac flies. He piled up those RBIs thanks to solid situational hitting. He wasn't afraid settle for a fly ball to get that run in. How many guys now swing our of their shoes with 0 or 1 down, and 2 strikes, and leave guys on 3rd? I agree that RBI is a discounted stat because of the dependency on baserunners in front of you, but Carter definitely did his part.